A Titanic Task

Who says only Titans can move and shape lands? Well, people who don’t know much, or who are dogmatically following some silly beliefs. For your information, ethereals can move lands. As I learned some time ago, they sometimes locate worlds shattered by the Burning Legion (or Old Gods, or other nasties – yes, there are more) and take whole chunks of those worlds, snap some magic technology to them and relocate those chunks elsewhere for easy harvest by their ethereal and grav crews. A lot of the minerals or items you may have purchased or otherwise acquired from ethereals come from these. So when I learned about an ethereal in deep debt who was willing to part with his land-moving devices, I was quick to jump on the occasion.

You might ask, why would you need that? See, I’m a very paranoid person. I’m constantly afraid of various threats that might prove dangerous to me. That’s why I always lived in towers. I was above the world, far from anyone who might pose a threat to me. But that still wasn’t quite enough. My tower in Duskwood was once attacked by the Iron Horde. So I took over a small island location of which no one knows about. I made sure only a few people even within the Tower, knew where it was. Even my crews that got to live on the Island didn’t know where it was exactly. I couldn’t risk them accidentally blabbing on about it to random people. I mean, half of them are murlocs. Not literally half, don’t be pedantic. Where was I? Oh yes, but that wasn’t enough. I realized Azshara is experimenting with the Trident of Neptulon and might strike any day, and I know for a fact she will within the next fifty years. We were right on her line of fire (or water, or whatever) on that island, and that made me more than anxious. So I went for the obvious answer (well, obvious to me, anyway) – I moved the Island. To another world.

It wasn’t an easy task, and given what we had to do, it was probably a one-time only thing. First, I had to acquire those devices from the ethereal, and let me tell you, they weren’t cheap. The guy went off happy he’ll pay off his debts, and I got a set of perfectly serviceable ethereal mass displacement masts. Then, we had to figure out how to use them without blowing up the planet, Of course, the instructions were in K’areshi and Gnadra so we had to decipher everything. But once we did, we were in perfect position to realize my dream: move the Island to another world. And we didn’t even need a donkey wheel or to drop anyone in the middle of Tanaris.

But the biggest problem with moving the Island was the energy. As expected, moving large chunks of land through entire light years takes a lot of energy, even when you make a shortcut through the Twisting Nether. When ethereals do this, they don’t care about what happens on their land chunks because they’re just going to wreck it with their mining. Also, they move pieces that are already in the Nether, to another portion of it so the energy can be pulled straight from the clouds of phlogiston. We didn’t have that luxury but I heard about an emergency technique they sometimes use – they capture powerful void entities and drain them of magical energy to power the move. Hey, it just so happened we had a powerful, dark spirit occupying the Island. That I failed to ask for permission about the whole “moving the Island thing”.

I’m an arakkoa, even if I’m not a Talon-Priest, I know how to capture dark spirits. Powerful or not, a proper magical field will hold any being of that type. I set up a trap for Lehba and called him up. When he arrived, he was captured in the field that we then set up to connect to the masts and we kept him there for a while, until everything else was working and the moment was right. We needed to make preparations on the destination world… Oh yeah, there was this whole thing about finding a perfect destination world. Long story short, we kept looking for a world which had a climate as similar to the one the Island was in as possible. We found a whole load of barren planets, toxic planets, desert planets and ice planets, and even a promising prospect that proved to be under Old God domain. Then we found the “pollen world” which I named Anzulekk.

Anzulekk, named after Anzu if you can’t tell, is a temperate planet that appears slightly smaller than Azeroth, but the air is thicker and somewhat harder to breathe. The biggest problem here was all the damn pollen. There are these large balls of pollen floating everywhere on land that make some of our people allergic. They’ll either have to develop some immunity. or just not go to mainland. It’s cool but not cold, humid and not very bright – almost a perfect climate for me. But there’s more – just on the edge of the horizon, you can see another world that appears to be Anzulekk’s twin, with both orbiting a common weight center in between them. It’s almost identical to Anzulekk (when it comes to climate, not land shapes) so I named it Ka’alulekk. Menrim insists on calling it Anzulekk-B, because apparently, no one can pronounce Ka’alulekk. And still there’s more – we’ve got an abandoned Titan outpost further inland. Abandoned, not destroyed, so most of the stuff there (whatever the Titans left behind when they flew off) is intact and we’re still only scratching the surface with our discoveries there.

So a few days ago, we ran the masts and… got welcomed with a message it will take three days. I was ready to take that, but Shazaad showed up again and offered to give me some ethereal battery than would make it go faster. Turns out, a loa is not exactly a supported energy source for these, so the energy transfer link was sub-standard and needed a connection to a proper battery to speed up the transfer. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t regret owing anything to Shazaad, but hey, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Unless you have valid reasons to suspect there are Greeks hiding inside (I’m not sure what “Greeks” are, I heard it somewhere). But anyway, we did it. We connected it and bam, flash of light and we’re there. We zipped through and landed on another world with no casualties. Except maybe some Darkmoon carnies and fishermen on Crestfall.

I think I finally feel safe. I’m sitting on the top level of my command center on the Island, which is out in the sea of an entirely alien world. No natives, far away from any villains, far away from anyone on Azeroth or Draenor who could pose any threat to me. I mean, I don’t exactly enjoy all those minions making noise down there but if you want a business done, you need to make some sacrifices. And this bunch… I’m confident they’re mine. And now they won’t ever go to a pub in Azeroth and tell everyone where we are. Suck it, Azeroth, you have nothing on me.